Wireless communications devices such as the BlackBerry® by Research in Motion Limited provide a variety of useful functions, such as voice communication, e-mail and Web browsing. Of growing popularity are mapping applications that take advantage of the device's wireless link and Web capabilities to download and render maps on the device. When coupled with a GPS receiver, either embedded as a GPS chipset or externally (e.g. Bluetooth™ connected), these mapping applications can be used for navigation and other location-based services (LBS). Depending on the map server, maps can be downloaded in vector format or bitmap format. While all map data required to fully render detailed maps onscreen can be easily downloaded to desktop computers with broadband connections, the same is not true when downloading maps to a wireless communications device (because of the limited bandwidth of the wireless link). Another consideration is the limited onboard processing capability of the wireless communications device which limits the use of computationally intensive labelling algorithms on the client device. These, and other considerations, are to be kept in mind when improving and refining mapping technologies for wireless communications devices.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.